


Chava

by Snow



Category: Tanakh
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: au_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-26
Updated: 2010-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-10 07:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snow/pseuds/Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of being sent down the river and becoming Moses, Chaver was raised as a slave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chava

**Author's Note:**

> Written for au_bingo, for the square of Other: Slaves.

Miriam was tugging on her mother's skirts, not realizing that Yocheved was more than a little out of it, having just given birth to her third child.

"What's wrong?" Amram, her father asked. "You need to take Chaver to the river."

"I can't. There are Pharaoh's guards between here and there."

"Then go around them."

Miriam looked up at her father. "I would if I could. But I can't. There are too many of them."

"Don't let them kill my son," Yocheved cried from the bed.

"I won't," Amram promised. "Miriam, run and fetch some of the old cloths. And the new one, that was dyed green."

Miriam went racing off to the back of their dwelling. Amram had no idea how much time they had before the soldiers would get here, but his impression from Miriam was that they were quite close. The soldiers only did weekly inspections of the Hebrew's newborns; they were supposed to have had more time.

Miriam was running back, and Amram could hear the soldiers entering the neighbour's dwelling. The woman there still hadn't her child, which meant the soldiers would be delayed checking the dwelling for signs that she was lying about that. "What did you name our daughter?" he asked Yocheved.

"Our daughter?" she rasped. Amram held up a glass of water for her, which she gulped gratefully. "Miriam?"

"No." He wrapped the cloths around Chaver, tucking them to make the blankets evoke an initial reaction of female. He then placed Chaver in Yocheved's arms. "Our other daughter."

"Oh." She was clearly in no state to be making these kinds of decisions, but she'd tasked Amram with saving her son, and it was what he intended to do.

"Chava," he said. "Her name is Chava."

She repeated the name as the soldiers entered their room.

* * *

They managed to convince the soldiers not to check under the cloths, but that hardly meant the threat was over. Even the neighbours could give them away, and it was more important to Amram that his family be safe than anything else.

There were no males, at least not as far as the Egyptians knew, of Chaver's generation, which meant that some of the building tasks fell to the girls, in an unprecedented move. At first the Egyptians asked for volunteers, then they started to draft girls.

"It'd be good for him," Yocheved suggested. "I'm worried that he spends too much time with Miriam as it is. He looks more like her than like Aaron."

"No," Amram said. "I forbid it. He _has_ to look like Miriam. It's the only way to keep him safe."

"We're none of us safe now," Yocheved said. "The Egyptians could decide to kill our daughters with just as little remorse as they decided to kill our sons."

"Yes, but they haven't yet. And therefore he's safer as he is. You should teach him weaving."

"So he can make clothing for the soldiers who could kill him in an instant do?"

"Yes. The same way Miriam does, the same way you do. The same way I build for them. It's not like we have a choice, Yocheved."

"I wanted something better for him, is all," Yocheved said. "For all of them, but with him I thought we might actually have a chance."

"I know. But if we'd managed to send him down the river, he probably would have drowned. At least this way he's alive."

"Yes." She nodded. "There is that."

**Author's Note:**

> I welcome and appreciate comments, including constructive criticism.


End file.
